Leaders Quotes - page 67
A world in which cultural identities - ethnic, national, religious, civilizational - are central, and cultural affinities and differences shape the alliances, antagonisms, and policies of states has three broad implications for the West generally and for the United States in particular.
First, statesmen can constructively alter reality only if they recognize and understand it. The emerging politics of culture, the rising power of non-Western civilizations, and the increasing cultural assertiveness of these societies have been widely recognized in the non-Western world. European leaders have pointed to the cultural forces drawing people together and driving them apart. American elites, in contrast, have been slow to accept and to come to grips with these emerging realities.
Samuel P. Huntington
His image in the public mind today is almost wholly a result of this selective, this assiduous silence, reinforced now by governmental hagiographic propaganda. The propositions he injected into public discourse were the precise ones-in sequence, and word for word-which Jinnah picked up once he decided that is future lay in playing the communal card. The propositions are again and again picked up by leader. after leader who reckons that the way to national importance is by becoming the leader of one community, and the way to latter is the religion-in-danger shriek; as such leaders keep erupting - Bhindranwale one day, Shahabuddin the next-the reader will at once see the contemporary relevance of Sir Syed's propositions.
Syed Ahmed Khan
Anarchy – anarchon – no leaders. Which means, everybody is a leader. You can't have an official set of rules for anarchy. I tend to think such connections casually, and break and form and break and form throughout our lives. If you look back ten years, you will remember a group of friends who you were productively involved with at that time, now some of them have drifted away, new people have come in. These are more naturalistic linkages, which exist while there is a need for them to exist. It's more like the way ants work.
Alan Moore
The central principle of Fritz Bauer's career was that Germans should hold judgement upon themselves. That meant prosecuting ordinary Germans, not just the leaders whom the Allies had prosecuted. [...] The Nazi defendants being prosecuted by Bauer all tended to offer the same set of excuses [...]. Bauer's response, which he formulated again and again at the trials and in public, was as follows. Those Germans whom he was prosecuting were committing crimes against humanity. The laws of the Nazi state were illegitimate. One cannot defend one's actions by saying that one was obeying those laws. There is no law that can justify a crime against humanity. Everybody must have his own sense of right and wrong and must obey it, independently of what a state government says. Anyone who takes part in what Bauer called a murder machine [...] thereby becomes guilty of a crime.
Jared Diamond
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth, and sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country. We do not accept this, and we will not allow it. Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image. And we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward.
George W. Bush
I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement. The violent assault on the Capitol - and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress - was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.
George W. Bush
I work for the United Nations. I go to places where enormous upheaval and pain and anguish exist. And a lot of it exists based upon American policy. Whom we support, whom we support as heads of state, what countries we've helped to overthrow, what leaders we've helped to diminish because they did not fit the mold we think they should fit, no matter how ill advised that thought may be.
Harry Belafonte
He is somebody who has fought against the occupying forces," says Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading Sunni clerical body. "All other Shi'ite leaders are seen [by Iraq's Sunnis] as collaborators because they cooperate with the Americans.
Muqtada Sadr
Take heed, therefore, wicked prelates, blind leaders of the blind; indurate and obstinate hypocrites, take heed .... Ye will be the chiefest in Christ's flock, and yet will not keep one jot of the right way of his doctrine ...ye keep thereof almost naught at all, but whatsoever soundeth to make of your bellies, to maintain your honour, whether in the Scripture, or in your own traditions, or in the pope's law, that ye compel the lay-people to observe; violently threatening them with your excommunications and curses, that they shall be damned, body and soul, if they keep them not. And if that help you not, then ye murder them mercilessly with the sword of the temporal powers, whom ye have made so blind that they be ready to slay whom ye command, and will not hear his cause examined, nor give him room to answer for himself.
William Tyndale
In a sense what he's calling for [President Trumps plans to create a United States Space Force] is acknowledging something that has existed in an unacknowledged special access project, black project, that has been operational in one form or another since the mid-to-late ‘60s... I have a man who is a very top secret technology management office whistleblower from the Pentagon who has acknowledged to me that we have operational systems on satellites in space that can track and target and destroy any object in space, and those have been fully operational for many years.... This is what we've discovered is the unacknowledged extra access projects are run off the books in an extra-constitutional way, and the leaders in Congress and in the presidency rarely have full access, never mind control, over those projects. This is something that needs correcting as soon as possible.
Steven M. Greer
It is only by the renunciation of all present hopes of office that Conservatives can save what yet remains to be saved of the institutions for which they profess to fight. To act the part of the fulcrum from which the least Radical portion of the party opposed to them can work upon their friends and leaders, is undoubtedly not an attractive future. In the changes of political life it may well end in the moderate Liberals enjoying a permanent tenure of office, propped up mainly by their support. Such a result, constituted as human nature is, would no doubt be irritating. Yet it is the only policy by which the Conservatives can now effectively serve their country.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
I was very fond of many of my comrades and leaders, but not one of them subsequently occupied my thoughts as much as Leo, while at that time he was apparently hardly noticed. Leo was one of our servants (who were naturally volunteers, as we were). He helped to carry the luggage and was often assigned to the personal service of the Speaker. This unaffected man had something so pleasing, so unobtrusively winning about him that everyone loved him. He did his work gaily, usually sang or whistled as he went along, was never seen except when needed - in fact, an ideal servant. Furthermore, all animals were attached to him. We nearly always had some dog or other with us which joined us on account of Leo; he could tame birds and attract butterflies to him. It was his desire for Solomon's key which would enable him to understand the language of the birds that had drawn him to the East.
Hermann Hesse
In this era of ubiquitous information, complexity, and intense scrutiny, it is becoming routine to respond to reports of character flaws in business, athletics, and politics with an indifferent shrug and a "Yes, but..." It's becoming easier to rationalize a lack of character by emphasizing accomplishments, as though this were a binary choice. It's becoming commonplace that character flaws are greeted with skepticism. In this environment, character matters even more. Building teams requires bringing together individuals with the right credentials, commitment, and character. A lack of any one of these will eventually mean trouble. Our teams- both leaders and followers- will and should be judged not only by what they accomplish but also by how. Neither leading nor following will be effective if personal interactions and beliefs are considered mere differences in perception. Rather, both leading and following require conviction and character.
Martin Dempsey
Loyalty is not an entitlement. It must be earned, both by leaders and by those who follow them. And even when loyalty has been earned, it must have limits. (Who among us can forget being asked by our chiding parents, "If your friend told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" Every day we see misplaced loyalty contributing to problems such as bullying, hazing, sexual harassment, discrimination, and corruption. To be sure, it can be difficult to say no to someone in a position of power who is using loyalty as leverage, especially when that person makes it clear that they expect total and unconditional loyalty. But that's where loyalty must meet moral courage, if we are to act honorably and do what's right.
Martin Dempsey
The Republican Party can no longer be considered the home for conservatives. Conservatism is about protecting the fundamental rights: That we are all equal, regardless of the color of our skin, the faith that we practice or our gender. But tonight there are millions of Americans, I'm sad to say, who are now in fear that perhaps their liberties will be challenged and threatened under a Trump administration that has made a campaign of targeting people based on their race, religion and gender. We must hold our leaders accountable now. We can no longer trust them to do it. They had their opportunity.
Evan McMullin
in the women's movement, writers have so often been seen and cited as spokespeople and as leaders. My feeling is that it is the activists who move the rest of us, and that one may explain, describe, praise, deplore or whatever what is actually happening in the way of action-and that's very important, so I'm not selling the word short either when I say this-but, you don't make a political movement simply out of words.
Adrienne Rich
An enormous amount is happening globally-different kinds of struggle in different countries, in different societies. When you look at South Africa, there's enormous leadership by women. Black women in South Africa are maintaining and creating a structure. In that violence-ridden society, in the midst of revolution, they are creating childcare centers, soup kitchens, planting gardens, keeping things going on that human level. Now I don't think that's just women doing the service work of the world; those women are also leaders of their communities. We could talk about feminism in the Philippines, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, not a monolithic global movement but many movements, all over the world, contending within and against many different cultures. The United States movement is only a small part of the picture.
Adrienne Rich
Awakening late to the pandemic, authoritarian or authoritarian-minded leaders have turned it into an opportunity both to shore up their power and to conceal their stunning ineptitude. To fail to see through their manufactured fog of war, as many in the media are doing, can only further endanger the long-term moral and political health of their societies.
Pankaj Mishra
When names are brought up as pioneers of "modern” science fiction, remembers Simak. this veteran's stories go way back into the Gernsback days, and they've been good all along. Whether he has run neck-and-neck with the big-name leaders, or paced them most of the way, it's hard to say.
Clifford D. Simak
I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know - we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states - based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany.
Mikhail Gorbachev
